Only the great Indian parivar is in Maja Ma: Looking at Madhuri Dixit film from a queer lens

What made me watch the film till the end was my curiosity for the inner life of a woman who does not “look queer” but could have an interesting story to tell and thereby challenge my preconceptions of what a lesbian looks like. In short, the initial premise of the film challenges the idea of of lesbian as “the other” kind of woman. And yet, despite the film using the “is she a lesbian or not” curiosity to propel the plot, it pays no attention to the story of love between Pallavi and Kanchan (Simone Singh) — which would have been the heart of the movie if it was indeed a film about lesbian desire. What it is instead is a kind of apologia for a past love, which Pallavi’s son Tejas describes in a scene of confrontation as “chakkar”. What happens to the inner life of these women, their guilt, their turmoil, and their jealousy– is all subsumed in the legit marriage plot between Tejas and Esha. In the writing of the film, both women are used as devices for a sensational reveal—unlike a Monsoon Wedding, where a wedding becomes a device for uncovering the deep dark secrets that lurk under the façade of happy Indian families. Here, the revelation does nothing to the institution of the family inside which it again goes back to being a secret waiting to be uncovered.

This is the pitfall of a “reveal” rather than a slow emergence of a character’s progress—the story is either a testimony or a refusal thereafter. Yes, she loved a woman, but did not have sex with a woman. At whose cost are we nuancing the category of lesbian and leaving it open to interpretation? This is what happens if the subject is a possibly-lesbian woman in a straight thinking film — she becomes a site for experimentation and we never get a peek into the journey of the character herself, her conflicts and realisations. Rather her dilemma becomes fodder for narrative titillation. What astounds and outrages is that by the end of the film—the woman upholds the myth of the happy family yet again, at the cost of us never knowing what she wants, never once refusing a modern version of agnipariksha in the name of la familia!

It is the way in which we imagine families and the logic of conjugality that tells the story of a past love (who doesn’t have one?) as a secret which needs explanation. In fact, by the end of the movie the Great Indian Parivar emerges stronger and more muscular for having withstood an accidental disruption of outing. Even in 2022, the logic of the Indian family (whether it is in India or the USA) cannot treat sexuality as a private choice, but pushes it into the domain of a secret that needs a confession/truth-testing.

We know that the myth of the happy family is usually sustained by the labour of women, mostly unpaid. Pallavi is the ideal wife—she adjusts and does not complain. She pleads with her daughter “parivar toot jayega”. However, I thought the film had hope when Pallavi says, “Jhooth nahi bolungi, apne aap se bhi nahi”. The fact that “kya aap lesbian hain?” is an open question in the movie, a slow regression from Pallavi’s accidental confession to her daughter. The character’s arc does not learn anything new from the journey it takes through the act of revelation.

If only, instead of asking “what is lesbian”, the film asked “what does lesbian desire do?” or “how do we sustain women’s desires” without pushing her back into the role and function within the safe cover of the family, I would say this is a movie that opens up possibilities for women and adds to the repertoire of lesbian. Instead this is a story that feasts on a secret, titillates its audience and is not changed by the revelation. The only character that changes is Tejas—thereby once again using a woman to bring about a change in the central male character.

While on one hand Pallavi seems eager to explore herself beyond the role of a wife and mother, she accedes to her husband’s plea of not leaving him — falling back into arms of the loving family whose conscience can be appeased through the pill of a pure, non-sexual, loving lesbian. The film introduces a strange mythological category to the world of gender and sexuality: a good lesbian who does not upset anyone. So what if Indian straight men had wives who once felt pure love towards another woman—the great Indian family forgives all sins that do not involve sex.

The ending leaves me disappointed. It is not easy to imagine the loneliness of the middle-aged woman in the great Indian parivar, whose emotional and physical labour is glue for it. What is Pallavi thinking? She doesn’t know if she is a lesbian, she confesses that she never really desired her husband, a potential union with a past lover is interrupted by chronic illness and we don’t even know if she had any other lover apart from Kanchan. Is this how we want to imagine older middle aged women in India, devoid of desire, of fantasies, especially after having met the feisty octogenarian Mai in Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand recently? Do we want to imagine older middle-aged women as passive and insipid, who cannot imagine themselves outside of the labour they perform for their families?

Nobody who has watched Fire (1996) can forget the scene where the simple act of women pressing each other’s feet is an act of tacit understanding, of defiance, of naughtiness, of play; or even in a film like Portrait of a Lady on Fire where glances are such powerful visual devices that the chemistry between the women haunts long after the film is over. Recent films like Sheer Qorma have used Indian tropes and contexts to delve into the layered space of the domestic where desire can disrupt what we assume to be a given. In 2022, to neutralize desire between women through the filial, to desexualize it is to deify women even when the film overtly denies it.

Maja Ma does not even attempt to develop the complex emotions such as chemistry between Kanchan and Pallavi. That the great Indian family can swallow all kinds of desires within the folds of its mythological acceptance makes me shudder. Despite the fact that for a minute Pallavi toys with the idea of identity beyond the roles of mother and wife, she falls back comfortably into her husband’s plea of not leaving him. In short, women’s desires for each other have no meaning for social institutions?

The category of lesbian outside this movie is political, still. And hopefully, sexual too. It is not as ambiguous as the film wants us to imagine. It is still about women who choose women in love and in life. In its aesthetics, lesbian is marked by an excess that is difficult to contain, it is marked by defiance and disobedience to patriarchy—elements that are missing from the film. If the film once dared to ask “parivar kya hain samjhayenge aap” instead of giving us virginal lesbians with pure thoughts and once again trying to add “pyaar ya sex” as retrospective nuance, I would not see it as an attempt to dilute label that has been reclaimed through years of women’s labour and activism. It is the direction of a question, from where and for whom that decides its potential to be radical.

The ending of the movie does not let us imagine what else Pallavi could be apart from a wife and mother. The assimilation of the woman back into the family as her role of a wife, rather than stretching the boundaries of a family and queering it is what makes this film a missed opportunity. Queerphobia is a deep suspicion in the way lives are led differently from “normal” families. This film swallows the robust category of “lesbian” and keeps it open for speculation where as, not for once do we see the family interrogated—its  armour and façade intact with no signs of self reflection.

Debolina Dey identifies as queer, especially the adjective. They teach in Ramjas College.